Among the information recording media, there have been a recording medium suitable for recording serial data, for example a magnetic tape or a compact disk(CD), which is ideal for recording continuous data like sound, picture, etc., and a recording medium suitable for recording random data used for computer peripherals such as a floppy disk device and a magnetic hard disk device (hereinafter referred to as HDD); in both types of the media, the recording format is already set to be suitable for either one of the recording conditions, namely, recording of serial data or recording of random data.
In the mean time, as a result of progress in information processing capability of computers, sound and picture information are increasingly handled together with various other data. In such occasions, namely in an environment so called multimedia where sound and picture information and various other data are handled mixed, CD-ROMs and HDDs have been frequently used as information recording media.
However, when serial data like sound and picture are recorded on an HDD which is suitable for recording random data, the data that should be continuous are often splitted and placed scattered on a disk as a result of the error sector replacement or by an action of the operating system used, causing interrupted sound/picture during data reproduction, although the device has an advantage in executing recovery of data error or failure of a disk, or in information search capability.
On the other hand, in a CD-ROM, which is suitable for recording serial data, the continuity of data is assured because of the format structure, however the medium takes time in seaching of random data contained in the multimedia information.
The present invention intends to prevent the deterioration of performance that should arise when recording random data on an above mentioned conventional recording medium which is intrinsically suitable to record serial data or when recording serial data on a recording medium which is suitable to record random data, and to maintain the continuity of data by providing serial data with a recording format that is suitable to serial data, as well as to shorten the access time by providing random data with a recording format that is suitable to random data; thereby offering an information recording medium, an information recording method and an information recording apparatus that implements these two kinds of data simultaneously on one recording medium.